Alan Heeger

The popular image of UC Santa Barbara is that of a party school, situated steps from the ocean and favored by surfers and beach bums. But a lesser-known reality is emerging: Behind the doors of the physics and chemistry labs, world-renowned scientists are conducting groundbreaking research. The two Nobel prizes awarded to UC Santa Barbara professors Tuesday are likely to bring public prestige to a university whose academic credentials have been recognized within the scientific world for decades.

The popular image of UC Santa Barbara is that of a party school, situated steps from the ocean and favored by surfers and beach bums. But a lesser-known reality is emerging: Behind the doors of the physics and chemistry labs, world-renowned scientists are conducting groundbreaking research. The two Nobel prizes awarded to UC Santa Barbara professors Tuesday are likely to bring public prestige to a university whose academic credentials have been recognized within the scientific world for decades.

U.S. scientists won big in this year's Nobel prizes, garnering six of the nine awards recognizing discoveries in natural science. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara led the academic pack, winning prizes in both chemistry and physics. As usual, the fact that most of this year's science prizes went to researchers at well-funded U.S. universities inspired grousing from various groups of scientists who felt shut out.

In most towns, a local theater troupe might boost ticket sales by having the mayor or the high school football coach take small parts in, say, "Annie Get Your Gun!" In Santa Barbara, where the university is home to five Nobel laureates, the Ensemble Theatre Company has rejiggered the formula: On Sunday, two Nobel Prize-winning physicists will portray two other Nobel Prize-winning physicists in a reading from a play that revolves around quantum mechanics and the development of nuclear weapons.

Alan G. MacDiarmid, one of the three scientists who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000 for their discovery that plastic can be made electrically conductive, died Tuesday at his home in suburban Philadelphia. He was 79. MacDiarmid had been in failing health with myelodysplastic syndrome, a leukemia-like disease, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania.

Two scientists at UC Santa Barbara were among six worldwide awarded Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics Tuesday for work that ushered in today's Information Age. Physics professor Alan Heeger won for devising the electrically conducting plastics that could revolutionize computing. And engineering professor Herbert Kroemer received his award for developing the laser technology used in CD players and other consumer goods.

Geneticists, biologists, engineers and astronomers set a swift pace for scientific discovery in 2000, overturning established wisdom and raising social and ethical challenges that policymakers will be forced to confront in 2001. The top scientific achievement of the year--and arguably of the century--was the unraveling of the chemical codes that govern life in several organisms. In 1999, researchers had read the DNA strings, or genome, of only one multicellular organism, the worm C. elegans.

Spray-on solar panels, power beaming down from outer space and gasoline-like fuel made from bacteria. Sound far-fetched? Maybe, but these and other futuristic concepts for producing power are being taken seriously in scientific, business and academic circles. Some have even raised millions in funding. This is the dream era for green technology, when even concepts that sound wildly innovative or insane ? depending on who's describing them ? are getting attention. "People who aren't afraid to take chances in completely uncharted waters sometimes succeed beyond their wildest dreams and turn the world on its head," said industrial designer and entrepreneur Richard Alan Hales.

Researchers from Caltech, UC Santa Barbara and MIT will share the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for their studies of the "strong force," the powerful and mysterious energy that holds the nuclei of atoms together even as the electrical charges on protons try to blow them apart. The Nobel Foundation said Tuesday that the award would go to H. David Politzer, 55, of Caltech; David J.

On the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, the government of Sweden and more than a dozen California educational institutions remind us that a disproportionate number of laureates have ties to the state--ties, it must be admitted, that in some cases seem comparable to an innkeeper's boast that George Washington slept there. So be it. The Golden State is nothing if not inclusive.